Blackheath 7 Shelford 17

 Saturday saw Shelford travel to Blackheath which was to potentially be a very tricky encounter having lost narrowly at home to them earlier in the season.

Discipline cost us that match but this weekend our discipline was superb and the first half saw Shelford put in arguably their best performance this season. It was not so much the best performance for flair and untouchable running rugby but more of control and discipline and the fact that it was for all of the 40 minutes and this ultimately decided the result. Blackheath are a good strong side but when they tried to attack they did so in ones or twos only to always encounter Jamie, Rory or M’bop gathering the ball once the tackle had been made and turning defence into attack.

This coupled with the running lines and solid defence of the backs or the boot of Andy kept putting pressure on Blackheath. It was not long before our first score when Chalky went over in the corner having shrugged off a few would be tacklers. As the continued pressure increased Blackheath’s heads went and in this game it was their discipline which was costing them. A penalty to Shelford was kicked to the corner and with the lineout won the drive to the line ensued but their defence stood firm only for Dan Conlon to pirouette from the back of the maul like a ballerina and with the strength of a mountain bear drive over the line for our second score. (This was Dan’s interpretation of events!!).

It was much of the same for the rest of the half in terms of pressure and tactics until Andy unleashed a huge up and under with Charlie and Will chasing, the full back made a vague attempt at catching it but as the ball bounced over the line Charlie was there first. Half time came with the score 17 – 0 to the visitors. The key to the second half was to grind out the win and in fairness Shelford again played most of the game in the opposition half and could have added more points but the key was to keep the clock ticking over without Blackheath scoring and it was not till the last play of the game that they finally crossed our line to give the final result 17 – 7 to Shelford.

This was a superb result for us as we need to keep winning our games now and see how the other results go. There are still five sides in with shout for the top positions in this league and we need to be one of them and if we put performances in like this in the run in then there is no reason why we won’t be there.